The Ritual of Beer Consumption as Discursive Intervention: Effigy, Sensory Politics, and Resistance in Everyday IR

We draw on work on popular culture, critical geopolitics, visual politics, affect and the everyday in order to develop a framework for the analysis of the ritual of beer consumption as discursive intervention. Specifically, we argue the need for International Relations to expand theories of visual politics to a broader ‘sensory politics’, incorporating taste, smell, and touch. For our case study, we explore the empirical contestation of dominant geopolitical discourses, critically analysing the production and consumption of two explicitly and intentionally political beers: Norwegian brewery 7 Fjell’s release of ‘The Donald Ignorant IPA’; and Scottish BrewDog’s production of ‘Hello, My Name is Vladimir’. Conceptualising the ritual of these beers’ consumption as affective, effigial, and corporeal discursive interventions, we encourage a move beyond the visual to the sensory, in order to make sense of beers’ (limited) potential for resistance within everyday IR.